BIO

BIO:

Chicago-based artist, Jean Sousa, has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and is the recipient of two Artist Fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council and a Regional Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was a recent Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. Awards include a Fellowship for residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Cliff Dwellers Fellowship for Artist Residency at Ragdale, and a Professional Artist in Residence at Oxbow in Saugatuck, Michigan. Ms. Sousa works primarily in photography and experimental film. Her photographic work has been in exhibitions at the Illinois State Museum, Chicago Gallery, the Hunter Museum of American Art in Tennessee, and the Rockford Art Museum among other venues. Her films have been screened at Anthology Film Archives in New York, the London Filmmakers Cooperative, Collectif Jeune Cinéma in Paris, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Cinematheque in San Francisco, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

Ms. Sousa was formerly the Trott Family Director of Interpretive Exhibitions and Family Programs at the Art Institute of Chicago. As a museum educator, she served as Chair and panelist at numerous national and international conferences including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and the National Gallery of Ireland. Ms. Sousa has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the MIT Summer Institute for Film, Photography, and Video at Hampshire College. She received her BFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of “Faces, Places, & Inner Spaces,” a book for young readers, co-published by Abrams and the Art Institute of Chicago, and reviewed by the New York Times Book Review.